It’s early May, and everybody’s got spring fever around the Big Apple.

At lunch, and on my afternoon break, I’ll get on the elevator at work on the 17th floor, and hit the silk for the lobby; just to stand for a few precious moments on Seventh Avenue to watch the community-in-transit as it hustles along the sidewalk.

People with cell phones, talking to themselves. Incan musicians, playing pan flutes on the corner. Models in stiletto heels tottering along like newborn colts. Sassy teenagers and determined businessmen. They’re shuffling, trudging, strutting. Flicking cigarettes into the gutter; snapping gum; arguing with their buddies; holding hands.

There’s an indefinable energy that can be seen in the pulses of streams of umbrellas on rainy days bobbing along through the sidewalks and traffic, like corpuscles through an artery. The wail of the cop car from the street, or the grumbling of the subway from the sidewalk grates, or the hum of the traffic, or the honk of the taxis, as ubiquitous as Canadian Geese in the suburbs.

On cold, dark, wet winter mornings, after getting off a New Jersey Transit train, one can cut through the Long Island Railroad section of Penn Station. Then, walk down a wide corridor with two base-relief murals picturing falling columns of the old Penn Station. At the end of the corridor, commuters can ride an escalator two stories up to 34th Street. Bored cops and camouflaged National Guardsmen stand by, as people step outside into a wild watercolor of drizzle, neon, and bus exhaust.

Trudging up 7th Avenue against the cold wind, the sky is a dark electric blue against the red “Ernst & Young” sign that scales a building ten blocks north. Shop windows are fogged; manholes belch steam. All the building facades have turned gray with the sky, like tearful faces that have had the color drained from them.

On other mornings, in friendlier seasons, looking eastward on 34th Street, one can occasionally catch a beautiful sunrise, orange in a yellow quilted sky, tufted with fiery red highlights; a narrow strip of color bordered on both sides by Macy’s and the Empire State Building.

A few weeks ago, someone stopped me on 7th Avenue.

“Remember me?” he asked. I don’t always remember the names of my former students, but I usually remember the faces. I didn’t this time, but he could have been an early drop-out.

I said hello to be polite, and he asked, “Where are you now?”

“Still teaching.”

It didn’t seem to register with him.

“Know what happened to me?” he asked. “They gave me the wrong meds. Prozac. It blew out my kidneys.”

“Will you be returning to school?” I asked.

“I can’t! I need new kidneys! In fact, that’s why I stopped you.” Suddenly, I realized that I was talking to a total stranger.

“I’m sorry. I can’t help you,” I said, and walked away.

Only in New York.

Only in New York, could you meet someone pan-handling for kidneys.

At any of the intersections in mid-town Manhattan, from mid-morning to mid-evening, is a cotillion of humanity, performing pedestrian quadrilles as they cross the streets, while moving on to their individual destinations. Again, there’s that indefinable energy. It’s inspiring.

And that’s why this page is called “Cotillion Squared.”

The phrase itself comes from a song called “Heroes and Villains,” music by Brian Wilson, lyrics by Van Dyke Parks. In that song, “cotillion squared” is pun and poetry; humor and humanity.

And that’s also why this page is called “Cotillion Squared.”